Saudi Arabia has told the U.S. its position stands that there will be no diplomatic relations with Israel unless an independent Palestinian state is recognized on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem, and Israeli "aggression" on the Gaza Strip stops, the Saudi foreign ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.
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On Tuesday, White House National Security spokesperson John Kirby said that the Biden administration has received positive feedback that Saudi Arabia and Israel are willing to continue to have normalization discussions.
The kingdom issued the statement to affirm its steadfast position to Washington on the Palestinian issue in the light of the comments attributed to Kirby, the ministry said.
The idea of Israel and Saudi Arabia formally cementing ties has been under discussion since the Saudis gave their quiet assent to Gulf neighbors United Arab Emirates and Bahrain establishing ties with Israel in 2020 under the so-called Abraham Accords.
Saudi Arabia put U.S.-backed plans to normalize ties with Israel on ice, sources familiar with Riyadh's thinking told Reuters in Oct, 2023, as the war between Palestinian terror group Hamas and Israeli forces escalated.
Isaac Herzog also expressed optimism that normalization with Saudi Arabia may be on the table again. He was interviewed in recent days by a student magazine of Harvard University that deals with international relations, and among other things he referred to the possibility of normalization with Saudi Arabia.
"The war that started following the massacre on October 7 slowed things down, but recently voices were heard from Riyadh offering to get back on track," he said.
The Saudi Foreign Ministry's announcement comes after Reuters reported on Friday that Riyadh would be willing to settle for a mere political promise from Jerusalem to establish a Palestinian state in order to reach a defense alliance agreement with Washington before the US presidential elections in November.
According to the Reuters report, the Saudi officials implored Washington to pressure Israel to end the war in Gaza and commit to a "political horizon" for a Palestinian state, and in return Riyadh would normalize relations with it and help finance the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip.
In the US , Israel's hostage deal with Hamas is linked to normalization with Saudi Arabia. Sources involved in the talks between the two sides have said in recent days that the Americans are putting heavy pressure on Israel to agree to the deal even at a heavy price, as they believe that such a deal will lead to a truce that will allow them to start a domino effect that will include the cessation of hostile actions in the north that will enable a settlement with Hezbollah, as well as the initiation of normalization contacts between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
The target that the Americans set for this is the month of April. They believe that normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia will not come without a prolonged truce, and they think that normalization will allow Netanyahu to justify the non-renewal of hostilities and giving up on the goal of killing Hamas. The problem is that Hamas is aware of the American domino plan, and will try - at the behest of Iran - to torpedo the normalization with Saudi Arabia. Therefore, there is no certainty that Hamas will respond positively to the outline of the deal.
Saudi Arabia has recently allowed the passage of ships of Israeli shipping companies, which were looking for a way to bypass the naval blockade imposed by the Houthis on Israel. When the ships arrive at the ports of Bahrain and Dubai, the goods are transported from there by trucks through Saudi Arabia and Jordan to Israel. According to estimates in the industry, in the last month dozens of such trucks made their way to land and brought goods that previously would have arrived by sea via the Red Sea.
The creative bypass will make it possible to bring goods to Israel before Passover. Following the Houthi blockade, shipping companies began to circumnavigate South Africa and reach Israel via the Mediterranean Sea. The Chinese company Cuzco, for example, announced that it has stopped sailing to Israel, and it is not the only one.